Tag: inclusion
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Authority Issues
Most people have “authority issues” of one kind or another. Some people resist any external authority. They fly into “no one tells ME what to do” mode right away. They’ll refuse to do something as soon as someone else says they must, or should, or might just want to, even if they think it’s basically…
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The Same Old Thing
Our church wants to be able to say “we are welcoming and affirming,” and mean it. On the whole, this feels like a good thing to me, especially since it is often true. I’ve begun to learn that I have enough reservations about the project and the way we’re going about it to fill a…
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Even the Young Ravens Get to Eat
I cry in church a lot. I’m not the only one. Other people do it, too. We cry for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes because it’s just so beautiful, those words of that song, or that sermon. Sometimes because something touches a sad nerve, or a bittersweet memory. Or because we all of a sudden…
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Around “A Bigger Table”
[Sharing reflections on John Pavlovitz. A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.] The adult class at our church has been reading and discussing A Bigger Table by John Pavlovitz for the past several weeks. Pavlovitz “went viral” in 2014, with his blog post “If I Have…
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Fourth Sunday in Lent
In Sunday school we spent time thinking about what a record of elaborate formal national worship might say to us, or how it might serve as any kind of model for our own worship. We noted the attitude of humility Solomon adopts, and people shared stories of kneeling in prayer – interestingly, childhood memories, of…
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Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
[A sermon on the Uniform Series text for today, Acts 10:19-33.] Hate has been making the news of late. But hate is not a new problem. It’s as old – well, almost as old – as humanity itself. We might want to say that hate is the first sin – because the first time the…
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Palm/Passion Sunday
“Whosoever” That word, “whosoever,” is emphatic: no one is excluded from “whosoever,” it’s unconditional. And I confess, it’s the one forever in my memory of John 3:16, a trace of the King James Version we memorized when I was a little girl: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son,…
Matters of Interpretation 